Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/818

BRO live to see. Brown's life was blameless, and his disposition full of benevolence; his manners were gentle and unaffected; and his conversational resources considerable, though he was somewhat silent in large or mixed companies. His reading, though desultory, was very extensive; and his facility in writing only too great, as it induced him to compose story after story, trusting apparently to luck for the disentanglement of his plots. He threw off three romances in one year, "with the printer's devil literally at his elbows." His style was often deficient in ease and simplicity; and he was apt to stop short in the midst of his most exciting narrations to philosophize upon them; but his romances were much admired in his time, and are still read with interest. He had a powerful but somewhat morbid imagination, considerable descriptive power, and much intensity of conception.  BROWN,, formerly provost of Fort-William college, Calcutta, and senior chaplain of the Bengal presidency, was born in the year 1763. His father was a respectable farmer in the East Riding of Yorkshire; but through the kindness of a clergyman, who took an interest in the boy, he was able to give his son a good education. From the grammar-school of Hull he passed, about the age of twenty-one, to the university of Cambridge, and was entered at Magdalene college. Here, though much interrupted by illness, he prosecuted the usual studies; but from which he was called off by an unforeseen and remarkable offer of a position in India—viz., that of chaplain to an orphan asylum near Calcutta. Having obtained full orders from the then bishop of Llandaff, Dr. Watson—Mr. Brown, together with his newly-married wife, sailed in November, 1785, and reached Calcutta in June of the following year. Soon after his arrival, he was appointed to the chaplaincy of the sixth battalion, residing at Calcutta. This post he held in conjunction with his duties as head of the asylum, till, about a year and a half after, he resigned the latter establishment, in order that he might be able to take under his ministerial charge the "old mission" church, which belonged to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, but was just then vacated by its missionaries, and must have been shut up, had not Mr. Brown taken it under his care. For the space of more than twenty years he never ceased to minister to the large and influential congregation attending this place of worship, till death put a period to all his labours. From the year 1799 he enjoyed the benefit of the able help and counsel of his friend Dr. C. Buchanan, alike as presidency chaplain and minister of the mission church. On the college of Fort-William being founded in 1800, by the marquis of Wellesley, then governor-general of India, such was the high estimation in which that distinguished nobleman held Mr. Brown, that he appointed him its first provost; and for the six years that he occupied this useful position, it may be seen, from various accredited reports, with what fidelity, ability, and usefulness, he laboured here also. Freed, however, by an order of the court of directors, from this engagement, he was able to give the more personal attention to the education of his own large family; and also to an object which, if possible, was still dearer to his heart—viz,., the translation of the inspired volume into India's various languages. In 1806, therefore, he became corresponding secretary to the then newly-formed British and Foreign Bible Society; and with all the help which it could supply, together with the aid of native translators and transcribers, he laboured for the last years of his life, to aid the accomplishment of this great design. It was, as he himself expresses it, his "dreaming thought in the night, and his waking idea in the day." Whether Mr. Brown is viewed in his endeavours to diffuse the charm of his own personal piety, and sound christian principles, amongst the young civilians in the college of Fort-William—his able preaching in the church of Calcutta, of which for twenty-four years he was the head chaplain—the esteem and affection entertained for him by all classes of the community, from successive governor-generals downwards—it must be confessed that few persons have rendered more benefit to the native and European population of British India than the lamented subject of this brief sketch. He died at the age of forty-nine, and was buried in Calcutta, within the church in which he had so long officiated, and over which is inscribed a just tribute of affection and esteem. See his Life, with a selection of his sermons; London, 1816.—J. W. D.  BROWN,, G.C.B., General, the third son of Provost George Brown of Linkwood, near Elgin, N.B., was born in Scotland in 1790. He was educated at the Royal Military college at Great Marlow and High Wycombe, and entered the army in 1806, as ensign in a foot regiment. In the following year he was present at the siege of Copenhagen, and subsequently served with distinction through the greater part of the Peninsular campaigns. He was severely wounded at Talavera. From 1824 to 1842 he commanded a battalion of the rifle brigade. In the latter year he was appointed deputy-adjutant-general, and subsequently adjutant-general of the forces. On the outbreak of the Russian war in 1854, he was appointed to the command of the light division in the East, and took part in the Crimean campaign; he was in the thickest of the fight at the passage of the Alma, and was severely wounded at the battle of Inkermann. In 1855 he was nominated a knight grand cross of the bath, and colonel of a battalion of the rifle brigade, and made full general in the army in reward of his services in the Crimea, for which also he subsequently received the grand cross of the legion of honour from the emperor of the French in 1856. In 1860 he obtained the chief command of the forces in Ireland. He died at Linkwood on the 27th of August, 1865.—E. W.  BROWN,, an eminent American publisher and bookseller, died at his seat in Watertown, near Boston, March 10, 1855, aged fifty-five. The son of a farmer in very humble circumstances, in Acton, Mass., he raised himself by his shrewdness, sagacity, and enterprise to be the head of one of the largest and most successful firms in the book-trade in America. Their publications were standard works of a high character; and Mr. Brown's fine taste and patriotic pride were gratified by so far improving the mechanical execution of them—the paper, print, and binding—that they rivalled the handsomest productions of the English and Scotch press. Mr. Brown also made large purchases of English and Scotch publications, often importing a whole edition of a standard work, and fearlessly putting it into the market to contend against a cheap and inferior American reprint. Very rarely were his excellent judgment and instinctive anticipation of the public taste deceived in these gigantic speculations. He was himself well acquainted with bibliography, his shop was a favourite resort of all the literati of New England, and he never forgot the name of a book once inquired for, or the well-considered judgment of a competent person upon its merits. The fortune which he had fairly won was munificently used in numerous liberal benefactions.—F. B.  BROWN,, a weak-stamina'd Scotch artist, the son of an Edinburgh watchmaker, and born in 1752. In 1771 he went to Italy and stopped there ten years, which was his ruin, copying Michel Angelo, and trying to think other men's thoughts. The result of this tarry in Capua was that he drew well, but was afraid to colour. Titian and Murillo made him tremble and despair. Still hunting about, he accompanied Mr. Townley (marble Townley) and Sir William Young to Sicily, and made some beautiful drawings. On his return home he went to him in Edinburgh, where the eccentric Lord Monboddo showed him kindness. In 1786 the magnetism of the south drew him to the black Babylon, and, compelled to stow away his great ideals and hopes as unsaleable lumber, he took to painting small graceful black-lead portraits with very indifferent success. Soon death brought him the best and only real balm for breaking hearts, and he died of consumption in Scotland in 1787. Mr. Brown was a mild, clever man, too general in his tastes and too varied in his occupations. He was acquainted with painting, sculpture, and music, and left a posthumous work, called "Letters on the Poetry and Music of the Italian Opera," 1789.—W. T.  BROWN, Colonel, an officer in the American army during the Revolution, was born in Sandisfield, Mass., in 1744, graduated at Yale college in 1771, and commenced the practice of law at Caghnawaga, New York, where he was appointed king's attorney. But he soon returned to Pittsfield, in his native state, and took an active share in the patriot movements at the opening of the Revolution. He was sent on a secret mission to Canada in 1774, to ascertain if the inhabitants of that province were disposed to unite with the people of New England in their measures of opposition to the British ministry. He made two of these hazardous visits, and returned safely, but without encouraging intelligence. In May, 1775, he served under Allen and Arnold in their successful expedition against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and was sent as special messenger to the congress at Philadelphia with the news of their success. When Ethan Allen, in September of the same year, made his wild 